Music Honors: Looking Over The Best Music Video Director Noms.

A Closer Look At The 2019 Central Track Music Honors Best Music Video Director Nominees, Who Make Dallas Musicians Look Every Bit As Good As They Sound.

With voting now open (and running through February 13!) in our first-ever Central Track Music Honors, we wanted to again acknowledge that we understand how approaching our ballot of 51 separate categories can feel like a bit of a task for those who aren’t paid to watch the scene as closely as we are. To that end, we’ve decided to dedicate some space on our site during this open voting period to breaking down some of our categories’ nominees a little more deeply. This below post aims to do just that. Don’t like what you see and hear? That’s cool, too! You can also write in your own top honors choices for each categories. The important thing, we think, is that you just pay a little mind to some of the amazing art that’s being created in this town — and that you express your appreciation for those talents with your votes. You can do just that — up to five times total, but only once per 24 hours — right here. Now, it’s time for the breakdown!

It’s almost four decades now since video killed the radio star, but somehow the internet’s barely managed to incur a flesh wound on the visual medium.

Yes, all these years later, music videos remain as important to an artist’s career as ever. One reason for that, says this Medium post, is the fact that YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the planet. In turn, YouTube still stands as the arena most people turn to for music — more so than Google or any other streaming service, even.

It’s an art form that’s not going anywhere anytime soon is our point. Well, that and the fact that Dallas is blessed to have some real artists in this medium.

Over the course of the last year, these directors have used paired visuals with sound to make powerful statements about consumerism (German Torres), to showcase the talents of Hollywood stars like Jason Lee (Chris Phelps), to help artists land major-label deals (HalfpintFilmz), to show off the promising future of Dallas film-making (Ciara Boniface), to go viral as shit (Dance Dailey), to give us repeated chills (Jeremy Biggers) and to take advantage of a house that’s about to be demolished (Josh Jordan).

No two of these directors’ perspectives are quite the same, but all add powerful visual components that elevate their sonic collaborators’ respective songs to higher plains of significance.

Below, let’s check out some standout examples of their recent work below. Just don’t forget to vote for your favorite after.

German Torres

Chris Phelps

HalfpintFilmz

Ciara Boniface

Dance Dailey

Jeremy Biggers

Josh Jordan

Cory Graves is the Associate Editor at Central Track. He enjoys not only writing about Dallas and its local music scene, but being a part of it as a member of the band Vandoliers. Courtney Love once referred to him onstage as “my fucking therapist,” which he immediately put on his resume.